Electrical energy is used as a mechanism to drive a hybrid and/or electric vehicle. To provide enough power to drive the vehicle, high voltage power may be utilized to drive one or more motors in such vehicles. It is known that the high voltage energy stored in various capacitors may need to be discharged when the vehicle shuts down or in other situations. Conventional discharge methods include an active discharge and a passive discharge to remove stored HV energy. In the active discharge, windings within the motor of the vehicle are used to discharge the energy. In the passive discharge, a resistor (i.e., bleeding resistor) is used to discharge the energy.
To reduce energy loss while the vehicle is an operational mode, it may be desirable to select a resistance of the resistor to be large. However, in order to quickly discharge energy in a passive discharge, it may be desirable for the resistance of the resistor to be small. By selecting a small resistance for the resistor to satisfy a quick passive discharge, this condition may negatively affect vehicle fuel economy.